MAY DAY QUEEN CROWNED IN COFFIN SAD DEATH YESTERDAY OF MISS ISABEL PORTER
Frock Made for Celebration of Tuesday is Her Shroud and Crown a Wreath in Memory.
Miss Isabel Porter, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Porter, of Biltmore, died yesterday morning at 9 o’clock at her home, the old Cheesborough place, on the Swannanoa river.
The circumstances surrounding the little girl’s death make it one of particular sadness. Tennyson’s lines, “The May Queen,” are applicable, for sweet-faced, popular Isabel Porter had been chosen from her schoolmates for “Queen” at the May Day celebration to be given by the pupils of the Biltmore Parish school on next Tuesday, and now, by the death angel’s visit, her funeral will take place on today, May Day. As the chosen queen in Tennyson’s poem, she died before the honor bestowed by her schoolmates could be completed by the crowning.
Miss Porter had been ill for a week or two with pneumonia, but until a few days ago it was thought she would recover sufficiently to take her place at the May pole, when the festivities should take place. During the last few days and nights her mind had wandered constantly to the May Day celebration and she talked of the dress in which she was to be crowned and of her mates and teachers and their preparation for the celebration.
The funeral will take place this afternoon from the late residence. The honors of the May Queen will be given her by a large coterie of her school mates. The dainty white frock she was to have danced in as Queen is a burial robe and the fingers of her little friends have woven a crown of flowers that will rest upon her head just as it would have crowned her in the glad celebration.
Rev. Mr. Crutchfield will have charge of the ceremony.
The May Day celebration will be held on Tuesday, because of circumstances which make it almost impossible to postpone it, but out of the love for the dead queen and respect for her memory, the part of the celebration pertaining to the queen, will be omitted.
Asheville [NC] Citizen-Times 1 May 1904: p. 8
It is a pity that Dickens died in 1870. What a death-bed he could have conjured from this poignant story….
The ritual of crowning the May Queen has been said to go back to the Middle Ages (earlier, if you believe James George “Golden Bough” Frazer.) The folk-holiday continues in England and Canada. I remember it being a religious holiday at Catholic schools, where a statue of the Virgin Mary would be crowned with a wreath of flowers.
This parody is based on the old chestnut, “The May Queen,” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, which was quoted in the press and recited ad nauseam in drawing-rooms until one wanted to scream. The anonymous Punch contributor has captured perfectly the thumpety-bumpety scansion of the original, which ill-accords with the lingering death-bed and morally uplifting sentiments found in the last two sections of the poem.
It was something of a joke that May-day weather in England was always inclement. In 1876 and 1877, records show that the day was either snowy or very wet. It was no wonder that May Queens died from chills, consumption, or pneumonia. Mrs Daffodil has previously posted an amusing cartoon sequence on the Ideal vs. the Actual May-Day, dating from 1878, when the weather continued perfectly foul.
Other tragic May Queens? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com
Eclipse with Solar Streamers, (Or Eye of Sauron) from 1913
I don’t know about you, but the upcoming eclipse has me feeling pretty damn jumpy. Other than the fact that the waning light is uncannily like that when a tornado is about to hit, there’s a feeling that the world is at a tipping point and all it would take is the barest weight of the umbra to send it spinning into the abyss….
But it was ever thus. And it is this theme—of eclipsical unease and coronal curiosities that I treat today. It seems that nobody is fond of eclipses but the scientists.
Comment on the Eclipse of June 8th
By William D. Burk
An Eclipse of the Sun or Moon at best can never bring anything good, because the earth is robbed of the Sun’s vital energy or the Moon’s natural energy for the time being. The part of the world where an eclipse is most visible is bound to suffer more than other parts where the eclipse is not visible, and the effect will be more or less so in things or places that are ruled by the sign and Lord of the sign wherein the eclipse falls. Azoth April 1918: p. 236
Cuba and Porto Rico lay outside the line of totality in the last eclipse of the sun; in fact, the amount of obscuration was rather less than was observed in New-York, or more correctly, than would have been observed if the clouds had permitted. None the less, to the eclipse is to be charged a large amount of infant ill-health and mortality.
In those islands all mothers and nurses have a fear of the evil operation of an eclipse on tender infants. They say that it is a fear that the children will be hit by the eclipse, but if any one should suggest that it is the devil which does the hitting the statement will not be disputed by adult Cubans and Porto Ricans. The only remedy against the malign influence that is know is to strip the babies as soon as the eclipse begins and expose them in the open air unattended until the shadow has passed entirely off the sun. If the child gets a case of pneumonia or bronchitis as the result of the several hours of exposure, it is proof positive that it has been “hit” by the devil behind the astronomical phenomenon; if the baby escapes it is due entirely to the purity of its soul.
When any child is “hit” it is taken first to the “padre” for the expulsion of the devil, and then to the “medico” for the completion of the treatment. In all such cases the approved treatment consists of the administration of an emetic to dislodge the devil of the eclipse and confidence that all will go well under the influence of faith and medicine. On the morning of the eclipse the weather in Cuba, at least on the north shore, was decided raw, and a larger portion of the exposed children took colds and died. Children who are not thus exposed at the time of an eclipse are supposed, according to local superstition, to be “hit” by the eclipse “diabolo” in less manifest ways, and to be beyond these methods of cure. All children who have never been exposed to this treatment must be exposed to the eclipse or take the consequences. New York [NY] Tribune Illustrated Supplement 29 July 1900: p. 13
And from India:
A woman far gone in pregnancy is locked in a room and every entrance to her room is close covered so that no ray of the dimmed sun or moon may reach her. While thus locked up the woman cannot do any work. She cannot dress vegetables or even break a straw or she may maim the limbs of the child in her womb.
If she sees any of the eclipse the child will suffer from eclipse madness or grahan-ghelu. When the eclipse is over every one bathes either at home or in a river or in the sea. They fetch fresh drinking water, purify the house-gods by going through the regular daily worship, take a meal, and present gifts, grain and copper or silver coins to the family priest. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Volume 9, Part 1, 1901: p. 395-6
In the United States, an eclipse and “maternal influence” was blamed for a child’s defective iris.
INFLUENCE OF STRANGE SIGHTS ON PREGNANCY.
Editor Medical Brief:—Already much has been written on “the influence of strange sights on pregnancy,” and I propose contributing one article, touching a very striking case of that kind. Some years ago, about 1808, was requested to see a child teething, and while talking with the mother about the child’s condition my attention was directed to one of the little fellow’s eyes, the mother remarking the while that “about one-half of that eye is darker than the other half and always has been since I first noticed the color of his eyes.” His were dark enough to be called black. On close inspections I found that the eye resembled an eclipse so closely that the impression at once entered my mind that probably the mother had been looking at the sun during an eclipse, and upon inquiry, elicited the fact she had looked long at an eclipse of the sun during the early months of utero-gestation. It was a complete facsimile; the line of disk of the eclipse being perfect and smooth. I may add, it was not discernible at about the distance of one yard from the eye, and did not extend outside of the colored part of eye. The child died since of measles in Grafton, W. Va. J. G., M. D. Medical Brief, Volume 9, 1881: p. 379
Eclipses were cited as a cause of insanity.
ECLIPSE DROVE HIM INSANE; DIED ON WAY TO STATE HOSPITAL
Union City, Jan. 29. Rev. Horatio Carr, of Union township, who went insane at the sight of the eclipse on last Saturday morning, died at 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon while en route to North Warren, where he was being taken to be placed in the state institution for the insane.
Rev. Carr was past 70 years and had been considered “queer” for the past several years, and following the eclipse of the sun he became imbued with the belief that the world was coming to an end. His queer actions became so pronounced that it was thought advisable to take him to Warren for treatment.
On the trip to the state institution, he became very violent, and his weak physical condition, unable to withstand the great shock, caused his death. His body was brought to the Cooper-Crowe undertaking parlors in Union City, and he will be buried from there this afternoon.
Rev. Carr was a graduate of Allegheny college, and despite his “queerness” was a scholarly man and well versed in religion. He is survived by a brother, Samuel Carr of Union City, and several distant relatives. The Kane [PA] Republican 29 January 1925: p. 8
They were also blamed for suicides: An eclipse coupled with the full moon made the consequences even more dire:
ECLIPSE CAUSES SUICIDE
Canton Man Affected by Appearance of the Moon.
Canton, O., Nov. 30. The eclipse and the change of the moon Saturday, it is believed, as the cause that drove Jacob Walser, aged 45, to commit suicide on the J.A. Reed farm, north of town. Walser’s body was found hanging by a strap from the rafters in the barn.
Walser was subject to melancholia every time the moon changed it was said at the Reed home. This had lasted for 10 years, as long as the family had known him. ‘I am feeling bad,” Walser would say whenever the moon changed. Saturday there came the eclipse coupled with the change to the full moon, which had a bad effect upon Walser. Warren [PA] Times Mirror 30 November 1909: p. 3
An eclipse was indirectly the cause of King Rama IV of Thailand’s death and I seem to have heard rumors about a French King and a Roman Emperor who died of terror during eclipses. Several less exalted people were said to have been frightened to death by eclipses in 1869 and 1900.
Frightened to Death by the Eclipse.
Winsboro News and Herald June 14. Fright at the eclipse was the cause of the death of a…woman who died at her home in the Jenkinsville neighborhood a few days ago. At the time of the eclipse the woman was at work in the field, and seeing the peculiar appearance of everything as the eclipse progressed, she, not knowing the cause of it, became terrified and started home. She ran a distance of three miles to her house, and when she reached it she fell down in a convulsion. The convulsions, which were probably caused by the long run and over exertion, continued, and the woman died a day or two ago. Yorkville [SC] Enquirer 23 June 1900: p. 2
KILLED BY THE ECLIPSE
A woman named Mrs. Gifford, living in the northern part of Marion county, died on Saturday from the effects of fright at the eclipse. She had no knowledge of its approach, and was alone at the time it came on, with the exception of a child four weeks old. Terrified at the sight, she seized the child and fled to a neighbor’s a mile distant. When she reached there her reason was gone. A doctor near by was called who pronounced her incurable. She lingered along till Saturday when she died without her reason having returned. Star Tribune [Minneapolis MN] 18 August 1869: p. 1
These ladies may, indeed, have died of fright, but there was a long-standing belief that eclipses could not only weaken the sick, they could kill.
Eclipses are the astronomical phenomena which, in all ages, have produced most vivid impressions on the minds of men. Ramazzini states that during the eclipse of the moon in January, 1693, the mortality among the sick was greatly increased; and many cases of sudden death occurred. According to [Richard] Mead, on the day of the total eclipse of the sun in April, 1725, all the cases of disease were exacerbated.
Baillon relates the following: A number of Parisian physicians were called in consultation to the case of a woman of high rank, at the time of a solar eclipse, but so lightly did they regard her case that they walked out to view the sky. They were, however, quickly recalled, to see her in a comatose condition, which continued until the sun had regained its natural brilliancy.
According to Matthew Faber, chief physician to the Duke of Wurtemberg, a hypochondriac, who was usually very peaceable, became, at the time of a solar eclipse, first extremely sad, and afterwards so very furious that he sallied out from his house with a drawn sword and struck down all those who opposed him….
According to Rawley, Lord [Francis] Bacon fell down with syncope during an eclipse of the moon, and did not recover until the moon’s disk was again clear. One of my own patients has been singularly affected during an eclipse of the moon. As soon as the obscuration commenced, her respiration became slow and her pulse weak; at a more advanced period her pulse rose, but her respiration was almost suspended. Then she fell into a state of utter unconsciousness, without any motion whatever. As the moon passed out of the earth’s shadow, these symptoms gradually disappeared; and after the eclipse had terminated she felt no traces of the disorder. This case has some analogy with that of Lord Bacon. These facts can scarcely be attributed to the imagination. St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, Volume 13: p. 514-515
Physician Richard Mead offered some “surprizing” observations:
“What happened January 21, 1693, was very surprizing. For the Moon having been eclipsed that night, the greatest part of the sick died about the very hour of the eclipse: and some were even struck with sudden death.”…
And it is still fresh in the memories of some, that in that memorable eclipse of the Sun, which happened April 22, 1715, and in which the total obscuration lasted here at London three minutes and twenty-three seconds, many sick people found themselves considerably worse during the time: which circumstance people generally wondered at.” The Medical Works of Richard Mead, 1762: p. 188-89
It is axiomatic that animals behaved in strange ways during eclipses, but apparently they, too, were vulnerable to death by eclipse.
Effects of a Solar Eclipse on Animals.—In his report on the eclipse of July 8th, M. [François] Arago mentions in support of a popular notion which he had always disbelieved, that a friend of his put five healthy and lively linnets in a cage together, and fed them immediately before the eclipse. At the end of it three of them were found dead. Other indications of the alarm it produced were seen in a dog which had been long kept fasting, and which was eating hungrily when the eclipse commenced, but left his food as soon as the darkness set in. A colony of ants which had been working actively, suddenly ceased from their labors at the same moment.—Gazette Medicale. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1843: p. 128
While I don’t have a clue about the astrological statements in the following excerpts, eclipses were invariably seen as portents of conflict, particularly by astrologers in the 1910s, who earnestly analyzed the effects of stars, planets, and eclipses on the prospects for war.
If eclipses have effect on international affairs it would seem that the solar eclipse of April 27th, 1912, in 27˚ 5’ Aries was the celestial portent of the GREAT WAR. Though it occurred over two years before the outbreak of that conflict it is the only solar eclipse within a reasonable number of years previous to it whose central line of total eclipse passed directly over the scenes of the greatest carnage in that war subsequently occurring. This line of totality passed through the northwest of France, Belgium, the Baltic and the north of Russia. If we call this a coincidence it is certainly a most remarkable one. Cardan averred that an eclipse of the Sun in Aries portended “terrible wars and slaughter,” and that eclipse certainly lived up to that reputation. As time went on the next warning the world received of the close approach of the conflict was the lunar eclipse of March, 1914, Previous to the solar eclipse of April 17th, 1912, some astrologers, among them Zadkiel, issued warnings of war, but seemed to expect it that same year and as nothing of that kind occurred the eclipse seems to have been forgotten. It would seem that the matter is of sufficient importance to be taken up by proficient mathematical astrologers and the relation between these eclipses and the Great War be established once for all, if such is possible… The Adept, The American Journal of Astrology, December 1920: p. 8
If the central line of totality is significant, what can we expect for those areas darkened by Monday’s event?
This passage tells of the ominous total solar eclipse on 21 August 1914, and explains the lapse of time between the eclipse of 1912 and the outbreak of the Great War:
The Power of Regulus
“As a matter of fact, it was not merely Mars that was ascending at the summer solstice, but Mars in conjunction with a martial star of the first magnitude, Regulus (or ‘a’ Leonis), and this no doubt greatly emphasized the martial influence. It is an astrological theory, to which perhaps some credence should be given, that fixed star effects are of a sudden and dramatic character. It is a curious fact that the eclipse of the sun on August 21st of this year (1914) [a total solar eclipse. The totality was seen in Northern Europe and Asia.] fell on the identical place occupied by Mars and Regulus at the summer solstice. According to the celebrated astrologer, Junctinus, a great eclipse of the Sun in Leo ‘presignifies the motions of armies, death of a king, danger of war, and scarcity of rain…’
It is generally held by astrologers that great wars are heralded by eclipses. The central eclipse of the Sun on April 17, 1912, which occurred in twenty-seven degrees of Aries, was…followed in the middle of October by the outbreak of the Balkan War, exactly at the time when Mars transited the opposition of the place of the eclipse. At the autumn equinox of that year Mars was culminating at Vienna and in the Balkans. An eclipse is traditionally held to rule as many years as it lasts hours [uh-oh…]; the duration of the rule of this eclipse would thus be fully three years. It must not then be assumed that its effect was exhausted by the Balkan War, which as a matter of fact was in its nature merely the forerunner of the present conflagration…. Prophecies and Omens of the Great War, Ralph Shirley, 1915: pp. 63-4
Apparently the bit about the influence of an eclipse lasting as many years as it spans hours goes back to Ptolemy. As Ann Geneva writes in Astrology and the Seventeenth-century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars, ”this timeframe provided astrologers with the necessary leeway to connect natural phenomena to important terrestrial events by extending their statute of limitations.”
Having found a good deal of Forteana associated with cholera epidemics, I was surprised that there were far fewer reports of high strangeness in connection with the solar events. I’ve previously reported on a mysterious giant bird associated with an 1869 U.S. eclipse.
My favorite bit of eclipse Forteana is this story, reminiscent of the popular lightning daguerreotypes, found etched on or in window glass.
The following singular phenomenon is related by a Nashville paper: A young lady of this city, wearing a highly polished silver pin, was looking at the eclipse considerably, through an ordinary smoked glass, during the time of transit, and afterwards discovered that the eclipse had daguerreotyped itself upon her pin at the time the sun was half obscured the impression remains there permanently, resisting the action of rubbing as well as exposure to the atmosphere. This is a phenomenon for artists to study upon. The South-Western [Shreveport LA] 15 September 1869: p. 4
While we would like to think that the modern world is beyond all superstition about these anomalous scientific events, in 1999, during the Aug. 11 eclipse, a Brazilian police superintendent released three prisoners because he thought that the eclipse would mean the end of the world. (Picui, Brazil), and a baby born during the blackout was killed by its 31-year-old mother, who feared it was cursed. (Strahotin, Romania) Augusta [GA] Chronicle 10 October 1999: p. 2
A number of schools are planning to close on Monday for fear children will damage their eyes. And yesterday I was startled to get a notice from FedEx about possible service interruptions.
FedEx is closely monitoring potential effects of the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017. Our first priority is the safety and well-being of our team members, and we will implement contingency plans as necessary. Events of this nature often cause pickup and delivery delays and disruptions for FedEx customers. [They do??]
Other examples of eclipse unease or Forteana? Send to chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com, who plans to stay indoors with the curtains tightly drawn.
There is now living in Bristol a Mrs. Linahan, an old Irish woman, who has not seen her own country for forty years. She is old, poor, bed ridden and suffering, but patient and cheerful beyond belief. Her strongest feeling is love for Ireland ,and she likes talking to me because I am Irish. Many a time, sitting in her little, close room, above the noisy street, she has told me about banshees and phookas and fairies, especially the first. She declares solemnly she once heard the cry, or caoin of a banshee.
“It was when I was a little young child,” she told me, “And knew nothing at all of banshees or of death. One day mother sent me to see after my grandmother, the length of three miles from our house. All the road was deep in snow, and I went my lone – and didn’t know the grandmother was dead, and my aunt gone to the village for help. So I got to the house, and I see her lying so still and quiet I thought she was sleepin’. When I called her and she wouldn’t stir or speak, I thought I’d put snow on her face to wake her. I just stepped outside to get a handful, and came in, leaving the door open, and then I heard a far away cry, so faint and yet so fearsome that I shook like a leaf in the wind. It got nearer and nearer, and then I heard a sound like clapping or wringing of hands, as they do in keening at a funeral. Twice it came and then I slid down to the ground and crept under the bed where my grandmother lay, and there I heard it for the third time crying, “Ochone, Ochone,” at the very door. Then it suddenly stopped; I couldn’t tell where it went, and I dared not lift up my head till the woman came in the house. One of them took me up and said: “It was the banshee the child heard, for the woman that lies there was one of the real old Irish families – she was an O’Grady and that was the raison of it.’” English Magazine
Aberdeen [SD] Daily News 18 May 1887: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Clapping and keening were a feature of Irish funerals; professional keeners called bean chaointe would cry of the merits of the deceased and the broken hearts of those left behind.
The “raison of it” was that banshees were said to be attached only to the oldest, noblest Irish families, usually meaning those prefaced by “O’” or “Mac.”
In some cases, families have been apprised of an approaching death by some strange spectre, either male or female, a remarkable instance of which occurs in the MS. memoirs of Lady Fanshaw, and is to this effect: “Her husband, Sir Richard, and she, chanced, during their abode in Ireland, to visit a friend, who resided in his ancient baronial castle surrounded with a moat. At midnight she was awakened by a ghastly and supernatural scream, and, looking out of bed, beheld by the moonlight a female face and part of the form hovering at the window. The face was that of a young and rather handsome woman, but pale; and the hair, which was reddish, was loose and dishevelled. This apparition continued to exhibit itself for some time, and then vanished with two shrieks, similar to that which had at first excited Lady Fanshaw’s attention. In the morning, with infinite terror, she communicated to her host what had happened, and found him prepared not only to credit, but to account for, what had happened.
“A near relation of mine,” said he, “expired last night in the castle. Before such an event happens in this family and castle, the female spectre whom you have seen is always visible. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman of inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors degraded himself by marrying, and whom afterwards, to expiate the dishonour done his family, he caused to be drowned in the castle moat.”
This, of course, was no other than the Banshee, which in times past has been the source of so much terror in Ireland.
However, sometimes embarrassing errors occurred.
Amongst the innumerable stories told of its appearance may be mentioned one related by Mrs. Lefanu, the niece of Sheridan, in the memoirs of her grandmother, Mrs. Frances Sheridan. From this account we gather that Miss Elizabeth Sheridan was a firm believer in the Banshee, and firmly maintained that the one attached to the Sheridan family was distinctly heard lamenting beneath the windows of the family residence before the news arrived from France of Mrs. Frances Sheridan’s death at Blois. She adds that a niece of Miss Sheridan’s made her very angry by observing that as Mrs. Frances Sheridan was by birth a Chamberlaine, a family of English extraction, she had no right to the guardianship of an Irish fairy, and that therefore the Banshee must have made a mistake.
Strange Pages from Family Papers, T.F. Thistelton-Dyer, 1895
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Both doves and pigeons are constantly associated in the popular mind with death. Every reader of Westward Ho! will remember the white dove which was the habitual death-token of the Oxenham family.
We have in Shropshire a less poetical record of a similar death-warning, which, however, seems to have been attached not so much to a particular family as to a particular house. The narrative shall be given verbatim from the pages of the old writer who has preserved it for us.
‘Beecause many maryages of persons in this parish of Myddle have beene made with persons of Cayhowell, I will say something of that farme. . . . There is a wounderfull thing observable concerning this farme, of which I may say, in the words of Du Bartas—
Strang to bee told, and though believed of few,
Yet is not soe incredible as true.
It is observed that if the chiefe person of the family that inhabits in this farme doe fall sick, if his sicknesse bee to death, there come a paire of pidgeons to the house about a fortnight or a weeke before the person’s death, and continue there untill the person’s death, and then goe away. This I have knowne them doe three severall times. 1st. Old Mrs. Bradocke fell sicke about a quarter of a yeare after my Sister was maryed, and the paire of pidgeons came thither, which I saw. They did every night roust under the shelter of the roofe of the kitchen att the end, and did sit upon the ends of the side raisers. In the day time they fled about the gardines and yards. I have seene them pecking on the hemp butt as if they did feed, and for ought I know they did feed. They were pretty large pidgeons; the feathers on their tayles were white, and the long feathers of theire wings, their breasts, and bellyes, white, and a large white ring about theire necks ; but the tops of theire heads, their backs, and theire wings (except the long feathers,) were of a light browne or nutmeg colour. (My brother-in-law, Andrew Bradocke, told mee that hee feared his mother would die, for there came such a pair of pidgeons before his father’s death, and hee had heard they did soe beefore the death of his grandfather.) After the death of Mrs. Bradocke, the pidgeons went away. 2ndly. About three-quarters of a year after the death of Mrs. Bradocke, my father goeing to give a visit to them at Kayhowell, fell sicke there, and lay sicke about nine or ten weekes. About a fortnight beefore his death, the pidgeons came; and when hee was dead, went away. 3rdly. About a yeare after his death, my brother-in-law, Andrew Bradocke, fell sicke, the pidgeons came, and hee died; they seemed to me to bee the same pidgeons at all these three times. When I went to pay Mr. Smalman, then minister of Kynerley, the buriall fee for Andrew Bradocke, which was in April, Mr. Smalman said, this is the fiftieth Corps which I have interred here since Candlemas last, and God knows who is next, which happened to bee himselfe. Andrew Bradocke died of a sort of rambeling feavourish distemper, which raged in that country, and my sister soone after his decease fell sicke, but shee recovered, and dureing her sicknesse, the pidgeons came not, which I observed, for I went thither every day, and returned att night. Afterwards my Sister sett out [= let] her farme to John Owen, a substantiall tenant, who about three yeares after fell sicke; and my Sister comeing to Newton, told mee that shee feared her tenant would bee dead, for hee was sicke, and the pidgeons were come; and hee died then.’
From Richard Gough, Antiquityes and Memoyres of the Parish of Myddle, 1700, Ed. 1875, pp. 45-48
Shropshire folk-lore: a sheaf of gleanings, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne, 1885: p. 227-9
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: On several recent mornings Mrs Daffodil has noticed the mourning doves making moan in the shrubberies. The creatures visit only intermittently and Mrs Daffodil does not know whether to take it as an omen or a directive…
Doves and pigeons are often conflated in folk-lore. One suspects that their reputation as downy death omens comes from their role as a symbol for the Holy Spirit. In some parts of England there was a superstition that if pigeon feathers were found in the feather bed or pillow of a dying person, that person would not be able to pass on until the offending feathers were removed. See this post on “Feather Superstitions” for the particulars of death-preventing feathers.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
So blasted many Christmas songs bang on about bells: Carol of the Bells, Jingle Bells, Ding Dong Merrily On High, Jingle Bell Rock, Silver Bells… Naturally these are always accompanied by someone shaking a string of sleigh bells, the silvery timbre of which hits me right between the eyes, causing a desire to boil the entire choir with stakes of holly through their tuneful little hearts. (And lest you think this is a prejudice against modern Christmas tune instrumentation, I don’t like the zimbelstern either.)
That ill-tempered introduction aside, let us swing over to a story of bell-ringing and death. We have covered tokens of death before, including phantom funerals and the predictive sounds of the phantom coffin-maker. Here is a case, not of a cheerful Christmas bell, but of the mysterious tolling after a death–a kind of truncated phantom passing-bell.
BELL-RINGING AND DEATH.
By Medicinae Doctor.
In the Spiritual Magazine for February last is narrated a very interesting case of spiritual bell-ringing immediately before death, from the pen of Sir Walter Scott, which has brought to mind another in my own experience, but soon after death instead of before death.
In the summer of 1852, I happened to be on a visit to my brother-in-law in Lerwick, the principal town in the mainland of the Shetland Isles, N.B. Towards the close of my visit my brother-in-law died suddenly, there is reason to believe from the rupture of a blood-vessel of the stomach into the peritoneal cavity. I was then a medical student, and, like most of the fraternity, a thorough unbeliever in the supernatural. I would rather invent fifty unfounded excuses, or possibly condescend to tell an actual untruth, than allow that I could credit for one moment that the dead could in any way influence the living, or own that there was such a thing as spirit communion with us, good, bad or indifferent.
On the evening of my brother-in-law’s death there were four persons in the house with the corpse, namely, my sister, the cook, housemaid, and myself. The housemaid made the following remark to me, unasked: “Doctor, if you hear the bells ringing during the night, do not be in the least alarmed, as it is quite a common thing in this country when there is a corpse in the house.” As might be imagined, I laughed heartily at the superstition of the girl and still more when the cook corroborated her statement, and said “it was no joke, but a serious thing.” To which I replied, “Well, if the bells do ring, you have given me warning enough, and I have a pretty good guess who it is that will ring them, if it is not the cat.” (There was no cat or other living animal in the house.) To which they replied, that “it would be done by the spirit of the deceased.” Being sceptical, as I have said, and duly warned, and without stating my reasons, I proposed the following arrangement for the night. My sister and the two maids were to sleep upstairs in a double-bedded room; I was to sleep on a shakedown on the drawing-room floor by myself, on the same flat with the room in which the corpse was laid out. As the children were expected early the following morning, and, as they might run into the nursery where the corpse lay, I locked the door, took possession of the key, and, to make certain, I drove a nail into the door and another into the wall out of reach and fastened over them a strong cord. My sister and I were closely engaged during the evening with friends looking over certain valuable law and other documents, and, after seeing our friends out of the door, I secured everything myself. With a candle I examined the back and front doors and windows on the ground flat, and, as there were a great many documents lying about in the dining room and tin chests with family and law papers, I closed the shutters and barred them—a thing rarely or never done in Shetland, as house robbery is all but unknown. I then locked the dining room door and took possession of the key. About 10.30 p.m. I went upstairs to say “good night” to my sister and the servants, all of whom had already retired. I then made for my shakedown very tired and with a feeling of anything but comfort. Unpleasant thoughts came into my mind; I felt it difficult to believe that one so gay and active could now be numbered with the dead; I felt as if any moment I might see him enter the apartment, or hear his kind and jovial manly voice.
Although I had been accustomed to the dissecting room and all its horrors, the nearness of a corpse of a dear friend, lately alive and well, fills one with very different feelings of awe and melancholy from that of a corpse who has no friend to pay for decent sepulture. Feelings or no feelings, ghost or no ghost, bell-ringing or no bell-ringing, nature demanded sleep, and at 10:55 the candle was put out, and I closed my eyes in peace. So far as I could guess, I had scarcely gone to sleep say 15 minutes when I heard a bell ring, and I recognised it as the dining room bell, the key of which was under my pillow. As I thought that I had only dreamt, I sat bolt upright, determined to listen. In about five minutes more a terribly distinct ring occurred, and it was the same bell. Not another sound could I hear, and nothing was visible; but as I expected that the next part of the performance might be the opening of the drawing room door, in a most dignified and scientific self-possession I laid my head upon the pillow, pulled the bed clothes over my head, and went off to sleep. In the morning, as the housemaid or waitress—she was both—brought me my shaving water, she asked me “if I had heard the bell ring?” I said, “What bell?” She said, “The dining room bell, to be sure.” I asked, “How often did it ring?” She said, “Twice distinctly, shortly after you left us.” To all of which I replied, “Of course, I heard the two rings, but then one of you did it.” “Never!” the girl replied, “Your sister can testify that none of us left the room until six this morning.” I dressed quickly, went to the room where the corpse was, and found all as I left it, the back and front doors the same, and the dining room door locked, the window shutters fastened, and everything as I left them; the bell-pull and bell all right, and not even the tail of a cat visible. For all that, in my then ignorance, I swore it must have been a cat, a mouse, the wind, an earthquake, &c., &c.; but no, no, the girls stuck to their belief that the bell was rung by the spirit of their old master, or by a spirit.
The Spiritual Magazine, 1873
The notion that it was the dining room bell leads to speculation that the dead man was calling for refreshments. I haven’t located Sir Walter Scott’s letter about the ringing of a bell predicting death, although he speaks of the passing bell in many of his novels and poems. If you know the source, give me a jingle at chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com
As an example of a precursor death-bell, we have this account:
Another death warning is the tolling–by unseen hands–of the bell of Blaenporth Church (in Cardiganshire). This eerie sound was said to be always heard at midday and midnight just before the death of any parishioner of importance. But as far as I can gather, the Blaenporth bell has ceased to toll its warnings; for an inhabitant of the parish, who knows the country people and their ideas very well, told me she had never heard of the mysterious tolling, and thought it must be a dead tradition. But it is a picturesque one, and so characteristic of Celtic ideas, ever interpreting as signs and portents the slightest incident that happens to break the ordinary routine of life, that I thought it worth recording here.
Stranger Than Fiction, Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-Lore, Mary L. Lewes, 1911: p. 218
It was also said that hearing a bell toll from a certain direction, where there was no bell, indicated the location of the coming death.
I’m delighted to announce the publication of my latest bookA is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death. The book is available at Amazon in the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia, but I’m told that it can be ordered by your favorite bookstore or library from book distributor Ingrams. (Please ask your library or bookstore to order it!) I’m told that Ingrams distributes to Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Chapters/Indigo, Blackwell, Foyles, and a host of other stores, so those retailers either have it for sale on their website or it is in their database so you can order it. If you’d like a signed copy, please contact me with a message on this page or at my Victorian Book of the Dead FB page.
A is for Arsenic is a guide to the basics of Victorian mourning. The book is 208 pages packed with the basics of Victorian mourning and death, with brilliantly gothic illustrations by Landis Blair. Each entry includes a pen and ink illustration along with 19th-century anecdotes ranging from macabre stories to jokes from the Victorian press that explain the concepts and artifacts of Victorian death. (Plus sinister little poems in homage to Edward Gorey.)
I answer your dead-serious questions including: Why did body snatchers strip a body before carrying it away? How long do you mourn for someone who has left you money in their will? What was a coffin torpedo? What is inheritance powder? Who killed off keening? What is dead water? A is for Arsenic also debunks several Victorian mourning myths.
There are 26 alphabetical entries—from Arsenic to Zinc, (see below) along with an informative glossary, appendix, and detailed bibliography. Here are the topics: A – Arsenic; B – Bier; C – Crape; D – Death Token; E – Embalming; F – Fisk Burial Case; G – Gates Ajar; H – Hearse; I – Ice Box; J – Jet; K – Keen; L – Lychgate; M – Mute; N – Necropolis; O – Obelisk; P – Post Mortem; Q – Queen Victoria; R – Resurrection Men; S – Shroud; T – Tear Bottle; U – Undertaker; V – Veil; X – Sexton; W – Weepers; Y – Churchyard; Z – Zinc
1775 Thomas Rowlandson drawing of graverobbers–including Death–pulling a shrouded corpse out of the grave. [Wellcome Library]
Previously I reported on the manufacture of shrouds and burial robes. Today we’ll look at some representative stories of the superstitions and ghosts associated with burial shrouds.
A good shroud was of the utmost importance for a “decent” burial. One benevolent English gentleman, seeing a young Irishwoman sewing what looked like a bridal gown, commented on the “finery.” The young woman rather tartly set him straight: she was sewing her own shroud and whatever happened to her, at least she’d be properly dressed for burial.
Seeing the apparition of some relative or acquaintance in a shroud almost certainly meant doom for the shrouded person.
I will relate a double dream that occurred to two ladies, a mother and daughter, the latter of whom related it to me. They were sleeping in the same bed at Cheltenham, when the mother, Mrs. C , dreamt that her brother-in-law, then in Ireland, had sent for her; that she entered his room, and saw him in bed, apparently dying. He requested her to kiss him, but owing to his livid appearance, she shrank from doing so, and awoke with the horror of the scene upon her. The daughter awoke at the same moment, saying, “Oh, I have had such a frightful dream!” “Oh, so have I!” returned the mother; “I have been dreaming of my brother-in-law!” “My dream was about him, too,” replied Miss C . ” I thought I was sitting in the drawing room, and that he came in wearing a shroud, trimmed with black ribbons, and approaching me he said, ‘My dear niece, your mother has refused to kiss me, but I am sure you will not be so unkind.”‘
As these ladies were not in the habit of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham. When that morning arrived, Miss C hastened at an early hour to the reading room, and there she learnt what the dreams had led them to expect: their friend was dead; and they afterwards ascertained that his decease had taken place on that night. They moreover observed, that neither one nor the other of them had been speaking or thinking of this gentleman for some time previously to the occurrence of the dreams; nor had they any reason whatever for uneasiness with regard to him. It is a remarkable peculiarity in this case, that the dream of the daughter appears to be a continuation of that of the mother. In the one he is seen alive, in the other the shroud and black ribbons seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss.
One is almost inevitably led here to the conclusion that the thoughts and wishes of the dying man were influencing the sleepers, or that the released spirit was hovering near them. Spirits Before Our Eyes, William Henry Harrison, 1879: p. 129
Pins and knots were forbidden on burial clothing or shrouds, according to Irish tradition. If they were inadvertently used, the ghost would come back to haunt the careless person until matters were remedied.
A STRANGE PROCEEDING
A Grave Exhumed in a Catholic Cemetery and the Shroud Carefully Unpinned.
Ansonia, Conn., Feb. 18. Yesterday morning four women, respectable in appearance and advanced in years, entered the side gate of the Roman Catholic cemetery, proceeded along one of the avenues and halted at a new made grave. Presently two men made their appearance and with shovels opened the grave. The women stood with bated breath, tears running down their faces. Presently the box which enclosed the casket and remains of a young girl was reached. One of the women gave a low scream. The strong arms of the men raised the box and placed it above ground. The lid was taken off the box and the casket opened. The features of a young, handsome, and beloved daughter of one of the women was exposed to view. The men looked on as if in wonder at what followed. None but the women understood it. Busy fingers went through the dead girl’s hair and shroud and all the pins that could be found were removed. The string which has placed around the feet after death was removed. A needle and thread were brought into use to supply the place of the pins in the hair and shroud. The lid was then placed on the casket and the remains lowered into the grave, which was filled once more.
This strange proceeding gave rise to many inquiries. Only a few could answer them.
It was learned that there is a strong superstition among the Irish people that if a corpse is buried tied or with pins or with even a knot at the end of a thread that sews the shroud the soul will be confined to the grave for all eternity, and that the persons guilty of the blunder will be disturbed by the restrained spirits while on earth. Thus it was, according to the testimony of the one of the women, who said she had been bothered for two nights previous by the ghost of the girl, now all were happy. This is not the first time that an incident of the kind has occurred in the same cemetery. New Haven [CT] Register 18 February 1886: p. 1
The drowned young woman in this next story returned to complain to her parents that the undertaker had buried her on the cheap, with a filthy piece of flannel instead of a proper shroud.
A RECENT REMARKABLE CIRCUMSTANCE,
WHICH OCCURRED IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
In the month of September, last year, the body of a young woman, dressed in black silk, with a watch, a ring, and a small sum of money, was found floating near Spithead, by a lieutenant of the impress, and conveyed to Ryde in the Isle of Wight. As no person owned it, a parish officer, who was also an undertaker, took upon himself to inter it, for the property that was attached to it, which was accordingly performed.
One evening, about a fortnight after the event, a poor man and woman were seen to come into the village, and on application to the undertaker for a view of the property which belonged to the unfortunate drowned person, they declared it to have been their daughter, who was overset in a boat as she was going to Spithead to see her husband. They also wished to pay whatever expence the undertaker had been at, and to receive the trinkets, &c. which had so lately been the property of one so dear to them; but this the undertaker would by no means consent to. They repaired, therefore, to the churchyard, where the woman, having prostrated herself on the grave of the deceased, continued some time in silent meditation or prayer; then crying, Pillilew! after the manner of the Irish at funerals*, she sorrowfully departed with her husband. The curiosity of the inhabitants of Ryde, excited by the first appearance and behaviour of this couple, was changed into wonder, when returning, in less than three weeks, they accused the undertaker of having buried their daughter without a shroud! Saying she had appeared in a dream, complaining of the mercenary and sacrilegious undertaker, and lamenting the indignity, which would not let her spirit rest!
The undertaker stoutly denied the charge. But the woman having secretly purchased a shroud (trying it on herself), at Upper Ryde, was watched by the seller, and followed about twelve o’clock at night into the church-yard. After lying a short time on the grave, she began to remove the mould with her hands, and, incredible as it may seem, by two o’clock had uncovered the coffin, which with much difficulty, and the assistance of her husband, was lifted out of the grave.
On opening it, the stench was almost intolerable, and stopped the operation for some time; but, after taking a pinch of snuff) she gently, raised the head of the deceased, taking from the back of it, and the bottom of the coffin, not a shroud, but a dirty piece of flannel, with part of the hair sticking to it, and which the writer of this account saw lying on the hedge so lately as last month. Clothing the body with the shroud, every thing was carefully replaced; and, on a second application, the undertaker, overwhelmed with shame, restored the property. The woman (whose fingers were actually worn to the bone with the operation) retired with her husband, and has never been heard of since. T.P. London Free Mason Magazine 1 June 1796: p. 406
*Keening was a well-known feature of Irish mourning—but can anyone tell me what “Pillilew!” means? The only meanings I can find are “quarrel” or “bother!”
Too much ostentation was as bad as too little for the Baltimore “old maid,” who haunted her old boarding house when she was not buried in the shroud she had wanted.
A Baltimore Ghost
An Old Maid’s Ghost has been sitting on a bridal bed in West Baltimore, and worrying all the lodgers in a boarding house. The old lady’s spirit was exercised over the grave-clothes. A short time before her death, she asked the lady with whom she was boarding not to bury her in any costly dress, but in a plain shroud, and threatened to haunt the house if her direction as not heeded. Her friends thought that it was only an old maid’s notion, and when she died buried her in an elegant silk and adorned the casket with beautiful flowers. About two weeks ago, a bridal couple engaged board at the house. Enter the ghost. The young wife awakened her husband, one night, with a startled exclamation. There was somebody in the room, she said; somebody was sitting on the bed. He heard a noise. Somebody was moving softly across the room, he said; somebody had been sitting on the bed. Whereupon he struck a light; the shade was not in sight. The next night a gentleman in the next room was visited by the ghost, during the next fortnight, she paid visits to every sleeping-room in the house. All the boarders have left the house, and the landlady is talking of having the body exhumed, the silk dress taken off, and the plain shroud put on. It is just as well to let an old maid have her own way in matters of dress. St Alban’s [VT] Daily Messenger 12 October 1876: p. 2
More stories of shrouds and spirits The Victorian Book of the Dead, which can be purchased at Amazon and other online retailers. (Or ask your local bookstore or library to order it.) It is also available in a Kindle edition.
See this link for an introduction to this collection about the popular culture of Victorian mourning, featuring primary-source materials about corpses, crypts, crape, and much more.
Robert Low, coffin maker and undertaker trade card, British Museum
There are many noises believed to presage death: birds tapping on windows, the death-watch beetle, howling dogs, crashes or knockings–and the sounds of a coffin being made.
What are we to make of this notion of a banshee carpenter? Is there some sort of time-slip that allows the sound of coffin-making to be heard before a death? Or are these merely the generic creakings and crackings of an old house interpreted through the lens of folklore as death omens? Why do we no longer hear reports of ghostly coffin carpentry?
In a previous post, I wrote about “The Tolaeth before the Burying,” or the sights and sounds of a phantom funeral. Here’s a definition of today’s Tolaeth:
The Tolaeth is an ominous sound, imitating some earthly sound of one sort or another, and always heard before either a funeral or some dreadful catastrophe. Carpenters of a superstitious turn of mind will tell you that they invariably hear the Tolaeth when they are going to receive an order to make a coffin; in this case the sound is that of the sawing of wood, the hammering of nails, and the turning of screws, such as are heard in the usual process of making a coffin. This is called the ‘Tolaeth before the Coffin.’ British Goblins, Wirt Sikes, 1881
This next note widens that definition to include noises from many phantom tradesmen and gives some examples of those tormented by these sounds:
The doctrine is, that the whole ceremony connected with a funeral is gone through in rehearsal by spectres which are the shades, phantoms, appearances, tai’shs, doubles, swarths, or whatever else we choose to call them, of living men, not merely by the shade of the person who is to die, but by the shades of all who are to be concerned in the ceremony. The phantoms go for the wood that is to make the coffin, the nails, the dead clothes, and whatever else may be required on the occasion; the sounds of the coffin being made are heard…
The shades that go for a coffin are called tathaich air ciste, i.e. frequenters for a chest. They are heard at night long after the joiner has ceased his day’s labour. The workshop is closed, and the wright has retired to rest, when the sound of a hammer, a shuffling for nails, and the working of a plane, are heard as if someone were at work. If anyone has the courage to enter the workshop, nothing is to be seen, and no answer is given though he speak.
Some fifty years ago there was a wright in Kinloch Rannoch, in Perthshire, who complained of having the Second Sight, and who, in emigrating to Australia, assigned as his chief reason for leaving his native land, the frequency with which he saw or heard people coming beforehand for coffins. The tools of his trade, plane, hammers, saw, etc., were heard by him at work as distinctly as though he himself were working, and the frequency of the omen preyed so much on his mind that he left the country in the hope of relief.
The shades were not those of the people whose death was imminent, but those of their friends and acquaintances, who afterwards proved actually to be the parties who came for the coffin. [See the story of the haunted Herr Humbarger below.]
A few years ago a medical student, in the west of Inverness-shire, sat up late on a summer night “grinding” for his examination. A joiner’s workshop adjoined the house in which he was. About two o’clock in- the morning he heard the sound of hammers, plane, etc., as though someone were at work in the shop. The sounds continued till about three. The evening was calm. Next day when he told what he had heard his friends laughed at him. Next night again, however, the noises were resumed and continued till he fell asleep. They were this night heard also by the other inmates; and as they were repeated every night for a week, every person in the house, including the joiner himself, who was brought in for the purpose, heard them. Shortly after a woman in the neighbourhood died in childbed, and the joiner, in whose workshop the noises were heard, made her coffin. The mysterious hammering only discontinued when the coffin was finished….Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, John Gregorson Campbell, 1902
Phantom coffin-making is quite as commonly seen, heard, and felt as phantom funerals. Scarcely a carpenter’s shop exists in the Highlands but has its record of sights and sounds seen and heard immediately before a coffin is made. This phantom coffin-making takes place only by night, so far as we know, thus differing from the habits of the phantom funeral. The carpenter himself, or one of his men or his family, is usually the person who sees or hears this. He may be passing the workshop when he sees it full of light; he looks and sees the shadows of men hard at work. He may possibly hear hammers and planes working, nails driving, and saws making their way through wood. He goes in: “darkness there and nothing more!” Sometimes the hammers and planes are working and nothing is seen. Wood for coffins, also is troublesome about a house; indeed, anything connected with a coffin is apt to get noisy and restless. You may hear the wood dashed to the ground or on to some other wood ; you may hear it sawed for more easy transport or to suit a certain length. Wherever the coffin rests, or is left on its way to the house where the dead is, its phantom may be heard, so to speak, beforehand. A relative assures me that, three days before her grandmother’s death, she was at midnight in an outhouse and heard the noise of a box as it was laid down, the swishing sound of something, and the thud of a heavy bag. The coffin was brought into that house for a momentary resting-place, the shavings were spread under it, and a bag full of bread and other things was laid down there with a thud, all exactly as she previously heard it. The Celtic Magazine, Edited by Alexander Mackenzie, et al, Vol. 12, 1887.
While the Tolaeth before the Coffin consists of all the normal carpentry sounds, it also may include noises indicative of handling the raw lumber, as the previous item indicates. Many people seemed to save choice boards or pieces of wood specifically for their coffins, storing them in the attic or loft until needed.
A few days afterwards, being in school with the children about noon, I heard a great noise overhead, as if the top of the house was coming down; I went out to see the garret, and there was nothing amiss. A few days afterwards, Mr. Higgon, of Pont-Faen’s son died. When the carpenter came to fetch the boards to make the coffin, which were in the garret, he made exactly such a stir in handling the boards in the garret, as was made before by some Spirit, who foreknew the death that was soon to come to pass.Morris Griffith. A Relation of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and the Principality of Wales, Rev. Edmund Jones, 1813.
A very intelligent informant says that the only thing of the kind he himself was personally witness to occurred above fifty years ago, when he was a young lad. An old woman of the neighbourhood lay on her death-bed, and while the rest of the household, of which he was a member, sat up, he was on account of his youth packed off to bed. Through the night he heard what he took to be the trampling of dogs on a loft above his sleeping place, and this he heard so distinctly that he asked his father next day what made him put the dogs there. He also heard a plank sliding down from the loft and striking on end in the passage between the doors. The following night the old woman died, and the lad himself was sent up to the loft to bring down planks to make her coffin. A plank slipped from his hands, and, falling on end in the passage, made exactly the same noise as he had before heard. Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, John Gregorson Campbell, 1902
An interesting (if jocular) note from Canada suggests that it is the ghost of the sick or dying person making his own coffin.
I would like to talk about a certain lonely carpenter shop, in which, before a death, the sound of plane and hammer used to be heard at night, and we were compelled to believe that the ghost of the sick one was, with officious if not indecent haste, making his coffin. As he was not yet a ghost, that is, not yet disembodied, there was a confusion of thought here. On some occasions he added to the nuisance by burning a candle which extinguished of its own accord if approached. “Scottish Myths from Ontario,” C.A. Fraser in Journal of American Folklore, 1892
Another variant of the Tolaeth before the Coffin is that of the haunted coffin-maker, who is visited by the doppelgangers of customers, who leave behind measurements of the coffin which will be required. The complete version of this story of the haunted Herr Humbarger is found in The Headless Horror: Strange and Ghostly Ohio Tales. While it was told in a rather unfortunate stereotypical stage-Cherman dialect, it’s a fascinating folkloric story.
“One night, or rather one morning, an hour or two before daylight, Humbarger arose, leaving his wife in bed, proceeding to his shop, and lighting a tallow candle, set to work. When Mrs. Humbarger awoke at the usual hour she was surprised to hear Jacob hammering away in his shop, and supposing that he had some job that must needs be finished early in the day, set about preparing breakfast, and when the meal was ready she called her husband:
“’Vall, Chacob, vy for you go of vork so gwick the day?” inquired Frau Humbarger.
“’Vy, Katarine, did you not hear dot man who comes of der coffin by dree o’clock?’
“’Nien, nien, Chacob, you make foolish of me.’
“’I not make foolish, Katarine; dot man come of dree o’clock on der door an say I must haf dot coffin of 10 o’clock, and he gif me the measure on dot vork bench, und I go of work und haf him now half mate.’
“Katarine was incredulous, and Jacob was firm in his asseverations. Certain it was that he had a coffin well under way, and by 10 o’clock it was finished, and Jacob was waiting for his customer while he smoked a pipe.
“Between 10 and 11 o’clock a gentleman appeared at the shop door, and Humbarger greeting him with:
“’You vas a leedle lade, mein frent!’
“’Not very late, considering that I have ridden from near Somerset since half past 7.’
“’Vy for did you go back home after you vake me, uh?’
“’I didn’t. I have just got to town.’
“’But you come of mine door last nide, and call me oud of mine bed to make dis coffin.’
“’Oh no, my friend, but it looks as though it would suit my purpose. Let me measure it.’
“The stranger measured it and it was just the size of a coffin he had been sent to procure, and he asked Humbarger if he could have it to take back with him immediately.
“’Dot vas your coffin anyway, since you order him and leaf der measure,” promptly responded Mr. Humbarger.
“The price of the coffin was agreed upon, it was paid for, and the farmer took it away in his wagon. Jacob related the circumstances to his wife, who said mischievously,
“’I told you, Chacob, dot no vone voke you up of der nide. You haf been haunted.’
“Humbarger, however, insisted that he had been called out of his house during the night, and that he readily recognized the man who subsequently got the coffin and pretended that he had not ordered it.
“Of course the story soon circulated throughout the village, and the gossips added to it. A month later Humbarger had another nocturnal visit, and a child’s coffin was ordered, to be finished in the afternoon. Later in the day a farmer living a few miles west of town called on Humbarger to secure his services, one of his children having died.
“’Oh, yes; I know dot. You come of der nide und told me, und mark der size on dis vork bench.’
“The farmer protested otherwise, but as the coffin was of the exact measurement desired he took it home. Then Mr. Humbarger began to have an indefinable fear that he was haunted.
“The thing was of regular recurrence, and almost everyone who came to Humbarger for a coffin found it ready made to order. The villagers began to fear the coffin-maker, and the coffin-maker avoided the villagers as much as possible. The women and children, and not a few of the men, believed he was in league with Satan, and he suffered a great deal in his trade.
“To those of his neighbors with whom he conversed on this subject—and among them was my father—he said that the orders were delivered in the night by persons whom he immediately recognized when they called for the coffins, and that when they were ordered he found the exact dimensions in chalk-marks on his work-bench the next morning. Cincinnati [OH] Post 16 December 1884: p. 3
One final variant of the Toleath before the Coffin was a sound interpreted as the shroud being nailed to the coffin:
Another portent of death was one known as the Knockers. The “knockers” were heard sometimes by the person who died, and at other times by the neighbours, and resembled the noise made when the shroud was nailed to the coffin. Several instances of this death omen have been related to the writer by persons of undoubted veracity, who, however, never attempted to explain the mystery, but simply contented themselves with narrating the “facts”. The experience of one family will perhaps prove sufficient to assist the reader in forming an adequate notion of this article in the local mythological creed. Mrs. O. and her son were sitting by the fire one night when they heard a kind of tapping, which the mother pronounced to be the “knockers” in their neighbour’s house, from which their own house was separated by a thin partition. The neighbour’s wife was ill in bed at the time, and died shortly afterwards. Those who heard the knockers on this occasion also heard the undertaker’s man nail the shroud to the coffin, and stated that the sounds were exactly alike. Not long after this incident happened, Mrs. O. and her husband lay in a bed in the kitchen of their house—the bed having been removed thither because it was warmer than the solar—when she was startled by a sound of knocking. She awoke her husband, who got up, lit a candle, and proceeded upstairs to discover if possible the cause of the noise. He had not proceeded half-way up the stairs before he heard three distinct sharp taps, as if they were made with a hammer; they were also heard by the wife, who told him they were the “knockers” fortelling her death. The poor woman died two months afterwards. Her husband still survives. Collections Historical and Archeological Relating to Montgomeryshire and its Borders, 1877
The noise of a coffin being built is one of those soundscapes lost to history like the sound of wooden wheels on cobblestones or the cries of hawkers in the streets. Unless you are a Trappist or Benedictine monk casket builder, you are not likely to hear the planing and hammering our ancestors understood as a matter of course—or took as a death omen.
Are there any noises still believed to be death omens today? Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com
I have previously shared some instances of “coffin threats” in this forum, as well as writing about the lost art of “crape threats” in The Victorian Book of the Dead. Today we look at the early-20th-century version of a gangster intimidating a rival by sending him a funeral wreath.
We can have no conception of how frightening it was to see crape tied to a doorknob or hung from a door knocker. Someone was dead—who was it? How did it happen?
Pish tush! you say. What’s a strip of black cloth tied around the doorknob? How could that possibly be frightening?
We have lost the thread of this deeply symbolic object: the fluttering banner of the Angel of Death. And when crape was tied to a door without a call to the undertaker, everyone shuddered, knowing that it was an omen of ill-will, a malign wish that the fabric of a once-happy home would be torn apart and that crape would shroud a house of death.
That is what drives this story of the Thornley Crape Threat. And not only is there a classic crape threat, the perpetrator may be our old nemesis, The Woman in Black.
THORNLEY
TIED CRAPE TO HIS DOOR
Grewsome “Joke” Played on F. J. Mills on the Anniversary of the Death of His Daughter
Special to The Herald.
NEW YORK, Jan. 25.— Frank J. Mills, a decorator, who lives at 563 A Lafayette avenue, Brooklyn, was greatly astonished yesterday morning when his office boy rushed around to the house from Mr. Mills’ place of business in Nostrand avenue, inquiring: who was dead in the family, “Why, what do you mean?” asked the puzzled Mills.
In answer the boy pointed to the handle of Mr. Mills’ doorbell. To his amazement Mills saw hanging from the knob streamers of black and white crepe, such as are used by undertakers to indicate that there has been a death in a house. As there had been no recent death in his family, Mills inquired of Mrs. Amy Thornley, who lives on a lower floor, whether any one in her household had died. She answered in the negative, and Mills began an investigation.
He learned that a man living next door, upon returning home late on the night before, had seen the crepe on Mills’ door and wondered at it. In the morning this neighbor had stopped in at Mr. Mills’ office and asked who was dead in the family. As the office boy had not heard he hurried around to the house to find out.
Mr. Mills said last night that he felt certain the “joke” was not the work of mischievous boy. The crepe had apparently been procured from some undertaker’s shop, but Mills cannot understand, he says, why it was placed on his door. By a peculiar coincidence, it was just a year ago yesterday that Mr. Mills lost a young daughter by death. [Other versions of the story report 3 years and that the dead child was a son.]
Yesterday he offered a reward of $25 for Information which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the persons who perpetrated the “joke.” Los Angeles [CA] Herald 26 January 1906: p. 3
The horrid prank panicked the neighbors.
Edward Laws, who lives next door to No. 563A, was the first to discover the crepe attached to the doorbell of the house of his neighbors, Frank J. Mills and Mrs. Amy Thornley. He was returning home at 11 o’clock on Tuesday night, and as he walked up the front steps of his residence he saw the black and white crepe fluttering in the moonlight at his neighbor’s door. The shock was terrible, he says, for he knows his neighbors intimately. He hurried indoors and woke his wife, who, on hearing that some one had died, wanted immediately to get up and go to her neighbor’s house. They decided, finally, to wait till morning, but they were so worried, they state, that neither slept all night.
Mrs. Thornley lives on the basement floor of the three story dwelling at 563A Lafayette avenue. She says she sat down by her front window about 7 o’clock on Wednesday morning to read the newspapers. She was surprised to notice that neighbors who passed, stopped and stared when they were abreast of her house. Mrs. Thornley was concealed because of the window curtains, and she states that she watched the strange actions of those among the passersby whom she knew for some time. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle 5 January 1906: p. 1
Enter the Woman in Black….
WOMAN-IN-BLACK WRITES “I LOVE YOUR HUSBAND”
“Murder for You” the Beginning of Her Letter to Mrs. Amy Thornley.
MYSTERY OF CRAPE ON A DOOR.
Weird Woman Chalks Insults on Stone Steps and Hides Notes in Graveyard Flowers—A New Advertisement.
Following with startling promptness upon the appearance in Friday’s Eagle of the advertisement in which a reward of $25 is offered for the “arrest and conviction of the fiend who placed black and white crape on doorbell at house 365A Lafayette avenue, Wednesday, January 3,” was the receipt yesterday by Mrs. Amy Thornley, one of the occupants of the house, of an anonymous letter, in which murder is threatened. Beside Mrs. Thornley and her family, Frank J. Mills, a painter and decorator of the Bedford section, lives there. The letter is particular to state that the crape was intended as a warning to Mrs. Thornley and was not for Mr. Mills and expresses the wish that ‘she may soon be sleeping by the side of her son,” who died five years ago. The peculiarity of this letter is the fact that it is composed of words cut from a copy of the Eagle, the words placed in such order as to form sentences. Several of the words are emphasized by being composed of letters cut from the headlines of the newspaper. The letter follows;
“MURDER for you. Crape is for Amy T., not for Mills. May you soon be sleeping with your dead son. Your husband will be MINE. I LOVE HIM.” The envelope in which the communication was received is postmarked “Station B. 1 P.M., Jan. 8.” Post Office Substation B. is at 1266 Fulton street, near Nostrand avenue.
The last sentence of the letter is now considered by both Mrs. Thornley and Mr. Mills to shed some light upon the question of motive, and there is no doubt in the minds of either that the perpetrator is a woman. In fact, Mr. Mills has seen the woman several times, and under curious circumstances. Up to the present, both Mrs. Thornley and Mr. Mills have been somewhat reticent in regard to the matter of the mysterious woman, whose threatening letters have been an annoyance for the past five years. Not only have the missives been used as the means of expressing threats, but threats and abuse have occasionally appeared in words chalked upon the cement floor of the areaway leading into the basement of Mrs. Thornley’s house, and couched in terms that often were too vile to bear repeating.
Acting immediately upon the receipt of this last letter, because of its significance in connection with the story published in last Friday’s Eagle of the appearance of the crape. Mrs. Thornley turned the communication over to Mr. Mills, who in to-day’s issue again repeats his offer of reward, adding an extra clause having reference to the letter.
“Twenty-five dollars reward for the arrest and conviction of the fiend who placed black and white crape on doorbell at house, 563 Lafayette avenue, Wednesday, January3. Also for person who sent anonymous letter, mailed Monday, January 8, in reference to same. Address Mrs. Amy Thornley, Frank J. Mills.”
According to the story told the Eagle reporter last night by Mr. Mills and Mrs. Thornley, the mysterious woman whom they believe to be responsible for all the ghostly threats and jokes which they have endured for several years has been clever enough to elude many attempts to catch her.
The “mysterious woman in black,” Mr. Mills calls her, for he describes her as dressed entirely in black, wearing a black hat wrapped in a veil which drapes down over her face. She is of medium height. She has been seen by Mr. Mills at night as she has stepped into the little yard in front of the house and thrown a note into the areaway leading to the basement door, and although he has rushed to the door in order to catch her in the act, he has opened the door upon a vacant yard and a deserted street.
She has never appeared by daylight. Under cover of darkness, she has crept into the little yard, chalked her messages upon the cement sidewalk there; left her threatening notes upon the window sill or poked them under the door, and lastly, hung the real undertaker’s badge of the house of death upon the doorbell.
“Following the death of my son five years ago,” said Mrs. Thornley last night, “I received so many insulting and threatening letters that I finally turned them over to the police for investigation. Nothing was learned, however, and the annoyance continued. I could not visit my son’s grave in Evergreens Cemetery, but what I would find a note among the flowers or upon the headstone. Only a month ago, I was sitting here in the dining room late one evening when there came a sudden rapping at the window. I knew instantly that it must be the woman in black. I rushed to the door, for I am neither timid nor superstitious, but there was nothing to be seen.”
Mr. Mills is a deputy sheriff and a member of the Citizens’ Protective League. He has determined that he will clear up the mystery even if he has to give up considerable of his time in the effort. His stories substantiate those told by Mrs. Thornley in every particular. He has sat for hours at the parlor window, which looks directly out upon the street, in wait for the “woman in black. Once, late at night, he saw the woman approach the house from across the street after having entered the block from Nostrand avenue, which is 200 feet from No. 563A. The dark figure crossed to the gate leading into the front yard, opened it, and then tossed a note upon the steps leading into the areaway. Mr. Mills rushed to the door and down the front steps to the street. He had seen the woman run toward Nostrand avenue, and she must be fleet of foot, he says, for she had turned the corner by the time he had reached the sidewalk.
[This astonishing talent for melting away without being caught is a feature of the mysterious Women in Black, as I’ve shown in The Face in the Windowand The Ghost Wore Black.]
On other occasions, Mr. Mills has stationed himself in the vestibule of the front door, but at these times the woman has failed to appear. Mrs. Thornley’s son, Frederick, has also taken his turn at watching.
Mrs. Thornley’s husband is a traveling salesman, and is at home but for a few days at a time. He is not a home at present, but Mrs. Thornley says she knows that he is as much in the dark as she as to the identity of the woman whose reason for the criminal annoyances of the five years has been jealousy of his love. Pending the result of the efforts of Mr. Mills to detect the “mysterious woman in black,” Mrs. Thornley says she expects to receive further threats from that party as a reply to this published account of her doings. The Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle 10 January 1906: p. 1
This article reveals the unsettling details that the persecution had been going on much longer than a few days and that Mrs. Thornley thought her son’s body had been tampered with at the cemetery.
Mrs. Thornley is a well-preserved woman with auburn hair and strong features. She was born in France and lived there most of her life.
Her husband, she says, is a traveling salesman for a German importing house in Manhattan and has been with them for twenty-two years. Her husband, she said, was in the South on a business trip, had been gone three months and was not expected home for some time. She said he did not seem much worried over the case.
THREATENING LETTERS.
“My troubles began,” she said last night, “when I buried my sixteen year [old] son [Percy] in Evergreens Cemetery, five years ago. Some weeks later, when I visited the vault, I found my son’s body had been shifted to the top tier. The attendants denied all knowledge of it. Six months later I began to get threatening letters in a woman’s hand. She said she loved my husband and wanted him.
“Several times at night when I was watching at the window, a medium-sized woman in black, with a veil, slipped in the yard and flung a letter on the grass or the stoop. No matter how quick I was in getting to the door, she was always out of sight. [This is so like Mills’s statement, it almost sounds like they compared notes—or colluded?]
“When I would visit my son’s grave I often found notes from the woman pinned to the flowers I had placed there. They were all threatening. Evening News [San Jose, CA] 20 January 1906: p. 3
Just as I was beginning to put Mrs. Thornley down as a trifle unbalanced, another witness saw the Woman in Black.
SAW THE WOMAN IN BLACK But Young John Weiss Was Too Much Surprised, Maybe Frightened, to Grab Her.
The mysterious woman in black has been seen again. She appeared on Nostrand avenue early last evening, but disappeared so quickly that some people in the neighborhood are beginning to believe in ghosts. John Weiss, it was, who saw the woman this time. He is 17 years old, and works in the office of Frank J. Mills at 302 Nostrand avenue, who lives with the family of Mrs. Amy Thornley, at 563a Lafayette avenue. Mrs. Thornley is bearing up well, despite the nervous shock following the hanging of crepe upon her doorbell and the anonymous letter of Tuesday, in which murder is threatened.
Mr. Mills left his office, which is around the corner from The Thornley house at 5:30 yesterday afternoon .John Weiss remained at the office. About 6 o’clock, John saw a dark figure passing to and fro on the sidewalk in front of the office. His heart jumped into his throat, he says. Four times the woman passed the door, each time pausing in front of it and looking in. On the last round, however, she came up to the door, crouched down in front of it, John says, and with her hand shading her eyes, glared searchingly through the glass of the door into the office.
John doesn’t know now why it was that he did not rush out and grab the woman. He says he wishes now that he had. For some reason, John says, he was unable to move. The eyes of the woman-in-black transfixed him for the moment. When he came to she was gone.
John went around to No. 563a and told Mr. Mills, who notified the nearest policeman. The Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle 12 January 1906: p. 2
How many people saw the crape-hanger? Only Mills, the office boy, and Mrs. Thornley? Is there a possibility that the Woman in Black who so transfixed young Weiss was Mrs. Thornley in disguise, seeking to bolster her credibility? The article is ambiguous about whether he actually saw her face. There were conflicting reports over whether Mills saw her only once or several times.
Let us look a little more closely at the main actors in this enigmatic story. Initially I thought that the perpetrator might have been the estranged Mrs. Mills, or that it might have been a cry for help from a lonely wife whose husband was away for months at a time. Other than these articles, very little is found in the papers about Mrs. Thornley, except her husband’s obituary in August, 1925 and her own in December of 1926.
However there is much to learn about the other occupant of the house, Mr. Mills.
Frank J. Mills, described as a “decorator” – a painter, separated from his wife Maria in 1899. He later became a real estate broker and was involved in local politics. In 1900 he complained to the police about a man named Weil, who had represented himself as selling advertising for a weekly paper, but who had taken Mills’ money without placing the ad Mills had ordered. Weil was arraigned for petit larceny, but was released on bail and committed suicide by swallowing acid.
In 1903 Mills is described in an article about the Law and Order League—a citizens’ patrol organization–as “one of the mildest mannered men that ever tooted a police whistle. There is a shrinking modesty about the man that it seems impossible to associate with the custody of handcuffs or the possession of a night stick. But he is valorous, too having served a spell in the Forty-seventh Regiment, and seen service with that command in Porto Rico.” In this article Mills and a colleague were ridiculed for supposedly putting rowdy people off streetcars. [The Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle 14 September 1903: p. 20]
In February of 1906, Mills mysteriously lost $1,550 and his bank book. He went to a theatre to “transact a little business” and thence to the bank where he discovered his loss. In September of that same year, it was reported in The Brooklyn Eagle that Mills claimed that he saved two young ladies from drowning at the Parkaway Baths—a swimming pool. A few days later Parkaway Baths Superintendent Phelan wrote and said that Mills had nothing to do with the rescue. The Eagle rather testily noted that they had just printed what Mills had told them about the incident.
In March of 1907, while Mills was described as living with his wife, Mills’s pregnant dog, Bess, “a brindle bull valued at $150,” was mysteriously stolen by burglars who did not bother to steal valuable jewelry lying in plain sight. The dog’s collar was left in the Mills’s trash can as if to taunt the couple. In short, Mills was a man to whom things happened.
Mrs. Thornley, with the years of threatening letters ignored by her husband and the police and her belief that her son’s body had been moved suggests a similar model of weird episodes. What, if anything, this means, I’ve no clue.
The same pattern pops up as a minor theme in phantom attacker stories, as well as in the lives of troubled polt vectors: chaotic lives, odd incidents, domestic infelicity–and frequent mentions in the papers. In a chapter in The Face in the Window called “The Death Bed Promise,” a dying Simon Fisher forced his wife Linnie to promise to never marry her lover, Walter. She broke this promise within a scandalously short time and was repaid by visits from Simon’s threatening ghost. Swirling in the wake of this story were dozens of news items in the small-town paper about peripheral characters– children and siblings—involved in unsolved mystery threats, beatings and disappearances. It was like an on-going soap opera and I didn’t even tell the whole of it. Is there some common thread in the chaos of disordered lives that generates bizarre fortean stories?
In an unpublished story from my files of a phantom attacker of a young woman, the multiple newspaper articles about her unhappy life and her persecution at the hands of a mystery assailant grew more dire and ambiguous with each day. Like so many similar fortean tales, that phantom attacker story simply disappeared from the media without resolution—just as the Thornley Crape Threat Case seemed to have come to an abrupt end with no corpse to validate the crape–and no Woman in mournful Black.
It is such a minor mystery although it received much coverage in its day. I am not sure why I care so much about a defunct tradition of textile intimidation. But if you have other sources that reveal the culprit or the motive, I’d be pleased to hear from you. Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com
Side notes of no real relevance: In the censuses, Mr. and Mrs. Thornley are described as “aliens.” (non-citizens.) The house where all this occurred is still standing.
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.
This story appears in The Ghost Wore Black: Ghastly Tales from the Past.
In trying to choose a post for Father’s Day weekend, I ran up against the statistical horror that is the father in the 19th-century press. Unnatural fathers, murderous fathers, insane fathers, fathers who forbid engagements, then murder their daughters’ sweethearts, fathers who threaten to behead their children–then carry out that threat. I wanted to counterbalance my cheery Mother’s Day post on “Maternal Influence and Monsters” with something less grewsome, yet still Fortean. But somehow I just didn’t have the heart to use the lurid, but true “Hatchetman” story I’d originally selected. If, after reading today’s offering, you decide you would prefer a tale from my bulging file on Victorian family destroyers, just slip a note into the pneumatic tube to chriswoodyard8 AT gmail. com.
I have previously reported on the mysterious faces that appeared on glass window panes beginning about 1871. The phenomenon was a pervasive theme through the 1910s, although there are a few reports from the early 1920s and not long ago, the Virgin Mary appeared on the glass windows of a health center in Florida. How much of this is self-deception; how much simple human brain pattern matching? I am not qualified to say and at this historical remove, I doubt anyone could sort out the riddle of these images. I will say that, in many cases, they appear to have some element of PK: a severe stress–a death, a murder, a shock–somehow creates an image of a known person, recognized instantly by the immediate family and sometimes, without prompting, by others. This particular story also contains an “omen of death” element. One oddity I note in this image is that it is described (somewhat ambiguously) as being able to be seen by someone inside the room with the window. Every other example of this sort of image I’ve seen can only be seen from the outside. Another enigma….
LEFT A PICTURE ON THE PANE
A Strange Memento of the Death of Husband and Children
Pittsburg, Pa., August 16, 1890. A mystery surrounds the home of the late James Dougherty, at Swissvale. Within four weeks the father and three children have died. The mother refuses to remain any longer in the little home.
Midway between Swissvale and Hawkins stations on the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and on a street which leads toward the railroad tracks back of the public school building, stands a little one story frame house. Surrounding this little home is a garden of probably half an acre.
This, until a few days ago, had been the home of the Doughertys—the father, mother, and three children. It was always the father’s delight returning from a hard day’s labor at the Carrie Furnace, where he was employed, to meet his little ones down near the river bank. Taking the short cut through the fields and over hills he would take the children one at a time, place them on his back and carry them to his little cottage.
He had always been a most devoted husband and kind father.
July 5, the second child was taken ill with a fever. It lingered for a few days then died. In just one week from the death of the first child another one, a little boy, was stricken down with the same malady and died within a few days. Hardly a week had passed after the death of the second child when the last and youngest child and the father’s favorite, was stricken with pneumonia and in a few days passed away.
THE FATHER GOES TOO
The death of the three children occurring in as many weeks was a severe blow to the parents.
Last Monday morning the husband departed for his work at the Carrie furnace early in the morning. As he left his wife he bade her the usual goodbye. With the parting salute, “Bear up, dear,” he vanished over the hills on his way to work. This was the last seen of him alive by his wife. That afternoon while engaged at work on a high trestle in one of the departments at the furnace he missed his footing and fell backward to a pile of iron below. He was killed instantly.
Just before the sad news was brought to the unfortunate woman she happened to be near the window in the front of the house.
She was horrified to see imprinted on an ordinary pane of glass in the window before her a picture of her husband as lifelike as if he stood before her himself. On his back was the favorite little girl and in his hand his dinner pail, just as had been his custom in days when all was bright.
The woman was frightened by the sight, and was in the act of notifying her neighbors when a messenger stopped her on the threshold and announced to her the death of her husband.
AFRAID TO STAY IN THE HOUSE.
The news completely prostrated her. The husband was buried yesterday, and Mrs. Dougherty left the house before night, saying she was afraid to remain there. She is now with friends.
Crowds of people have visited the house. The crape still flutters from the door, and one spectator after another files up to the window to see the sight. Every one expressed himself to the effect that it is a wonderful likeness of Dougherty and his favorite child. The picture has the appearance of being ground in the glass. It is near the centre of the pane. It is in such a position that it would really be seen by a woman sitting inside the room and watching the path over which her husband would return home.
New York Herald 17 August 1890: p. 11
Other faces in the window stories? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com
You can listen to this story on my new Ghost and Grave YouTube channel, @ghostandgrave
The Victorian Book of the Dead 